Back to the basics

Thankfully there are not many times in a season when I tell the team to forget everything they know about combination play, to stop building from the back and to simply put the ball forward and go after it. Only when the field we are playing on has standing water, thick piles of mud in random places and a strong wind that blows straight into one of the goal mouths would I tell them to scrap what we try to do and play like they did when they were five. It was not going to be a pretty game, and the team adjusted and simply played.

They simply went to every ball, ran at and through them, and put the ball in the net some of the times we had chances. There were memorable slips, mud caked uniforms, frozen hands and feet, a ball boy that went down right in front of our bench, a lot of jumping around on the bench (to stay warm) and a trip down memory lane that simplifies what can sometimes get too complicated.

One of the things my club coach always told us when I was playing is that soccer is a really simple game, and it is. It is easy to forget that simply running, kicking, shooting, attempting to pass, working to dribble, defending our goal and going for their goal are really the elements of soccer that always matter. At the college level intelligence starts to play a factor about how, why and when we do those things and to what degree, but the elements are the same.

Games like Saturday take out all of the strategy. They level the playing field for dribblers and play-makers and simplify the game to who can kick the furthest out of the mud, who can run fastest with water-logged shoes and who cares the least about what the uniform is going to look like at the end of the day.

If there is nothing else learned from games like Saturday, at least we know we can adjust to any conditions and still have the passion of little kids to just go out and play in the mud.